Homebrew Hi-Resolution DS Emulation

[FAST6191]

I wonder how hard this would be to do something like it in hardware....
Now I eagerly await the clone DS handhelds.

I also had a minor look into texture replacement/adding. As long as the emulator does not enforce texture limits/try for accurate rendering then it might even be quite doable and get N64 retexturing levels (or better) going on without the annoyances seen in those. My strengths are more in reverse engineering than artwork or openGL and C family coding but I await the day none the less.

However I am curious to see how well an anti colour banding filter would do -- bands really do seem to be used in place of gradients. This is nothing new but damned if it is not really obvious here.

Edit. Would also like to see some of these without coloured vertices.

 

[Deleted-236924]

A think a video recording is in order to show this in action

 

[the_randomizer]

Holy crap, what setting is that at, 3x, 4x?

 

[Deleted-236924]

Cycling through each of them

x2 seems to run at full speed for me (for Phantom Hourglass, that is) and the only advantage I get from x3 or x4 (visually-speaking) is that the image is less aliased. x2 is a *huge* improvement over regular while x3 and x4 are just small improvements over x2.

But yeah, OpenGL graphics mode has lots of issues with many games, and software rendered makes it unplayable when on anything higher than internal resolution.

(FRAPS doesn't like me changing display rendering on the fly, so I couldn't show regular OpenGL 3.2 renderer in the same video since it just stops recording video and only records the audio.)

 

[MushGuy]

Cool, now what's left to do is texture filtering.

 

[Chary]

This is quite awesome! From what I've seen, the graphics look a lot crisper. I'll have to see how my computer runs this.

 

[KazoWAR]

this is awesome. i always wonder why there was no ds emulator that had inter resolution changing why almost ever other 3d system emulator i played with had such an option.

Spoiler

 

[Apache Thunder]

It's about damn time. DS emulators have been stuck in the dark ages with being stuck to the low resolution of the DS. It just doesn't look pretty on modern machines no matter how many up-scaling features and Anti-aliasing you throw ontop of it. This was one of the main reasons I still use the actual hardware for playing DS games.

I understand some of the technical quirks of the console hindered making changes to the internal rendering resolution. But this unofficial mod to Desume proves that it can be done without horribly braking everything. Can't wait to see this eventually get merged into the official build. They might even improve it to the point where it's on par with Dolphin in terms of performance.

There's a surprising amount of detail in most DS games (ones that make use of 3D anyway), and this raised resolution really makes it shine. It's as if we suddenly got a 3DS emulator.

Next challenge...hack it some more so we can have 3D mode as if it was on a 3DS.

 

[WiiUBricker]

This made me thinking perhaps the upcoming DS games on Wii U will look much better than the originals.

 

[loco365]

It's about damn time. DS emulators have been stuck in the dark ages with being stuck to the low resolution of the DS. It just doesn't look pretty on modern machines no matter how many up-scaling features and Anti-aliasing you throw ontop of it. This was one of the main reasons I still use the actual hardware for playing DS games.

I understand some of the technical quirks of the console hindered making changes to the internal rendering resolution. But this unofficial mod to Desume proves that it can be done without horribly braking everything. Can't wait to see this eventually get merged into the official build. They might even improve it to the point where it's on par with Dolphin in terms of performance.

There's a surprising amount of detail in most DS games (ones that make use of 3D anyway), and this raised resolution really makes it shine. It's as if we suddenly got a 3DS emulator.

Next challenge...hack it some more so we can have 3D mode as if it was on a 3DS.

I'd like to see it do a camera hack so that it can create an effect of parallax 3d for monitors that support it, or even for taking 3D screenshots to display on a 3DS. Imagine being able to play your favorite DS games in actual 3D!

 

[pokefloote]

This made me thinking perhaps the upcoming DS games on Wii U will look much better than the originals.

This would definitely be interesting. I thought it was a bad idea at first because a DS resolution on a big screen? No. But this would be alright with me.

 

[GHANMI]

(X3) The backgrounds are 2D so there's not that much of an improvement (even though there still is), but the character models, especially during battles, are gorgeous.
I tried also Blue Dragon Awakened Shadow and it was mindblowing. Though the HUD glitches behind the 3D model -_-

 

[dreassica]

For some reason it doesn't like my laptops AMD GPU with those opengl setting 2x and up. Works fine with the hd4600 on my i7 quadcore.
When I run it on the AMD all the graphics are garbled and messed up.

 

[Mario92]

Well that looks WAAAY better than expected to be honest!

Cool, now what's left to do is texture filtering.

and maybe HD/Custom texture support as it's clear many games won't use that high quality textures to begin with because of original hardwares limitations.
Then some antialiasing and way to fine tune black outlines in titles that use it.

This made me thinking perhaps the upcoming DS games on Wii U will look much better than the originals.

I can almost quarantee they just upscale regular resolution. I don't remember single system doing anything to games internal resolution ever, it's even rare that they even give any options to filters! Sonys backwards compatibility/old releases are best but still games run with native resolution.

 

[soniczeki]

Left video - Normal Speed
Right video - %234 speed up xD

 

[xXMortalKombatXx]

I now demand 8x AA and 16xAF for the sake of those who actually give up on a car to buy their gaming PCs and play DS games on HD, I hope that the guy who made that would let us select any value (4k HD Nintendo DS anyone?)

 

[jurassicplayer]

Don't really need to listen to any of the talking. I just went and tried a couple of games with to show exactly what kind of performance to be expecting...maybe...

Spec:
Windows 7
Intel Core i5-4670K cpu (x64bit)
8GBs RAM
AMD Radeon HD 7850
core clock: 860MHz
memory clock: 1200 MHz


-edit-
Youtube decided that 360p is obviously the way to go, so here is the twitch video which is cleaner.
http://www.twitch.tv/jurassicplayer/b/519285818

 

[AsPika2219]

Poor Zeromus and other Desmume team can't make Hi-Res mode with this one......

 

[Deleted-236924]

Don't really need to listen to any of the talking. I just went and tried a couple of games with to show exactly what kind of performance to be expecting...maybe...

Spec:
Windows 7
Intel Core i5-4670K cpu (x64bit)
8GBs RAM
AMD Radeon HD 7850
core clock: 860MHz
memory clock: 1200 MHz


-edit-
Youtube decided that 360p is obviously the way to go, so here is the twitch video which is cleaner.
http://www.twitch.tv/jurassicplayer/b/519285818

?

Either way I hope that this can be optimized further and maybe coupled with a way of replacing 2D sprites with higher-resolution ones.

 

[pokefloote]

You're right, I just don't know much about desmume, so my window size wasn't optimal for showing screens. I can see the difference it makes now. Thanks for making the video!